The Death of Gutenberg?

In 1450, Johannes Gutenberg developed the printing press. With this, he gifted the common man with access to the printed word, primarily the Bible. Before Gutenberg and his press, books were translated and transcribed by hand, typically by monks, and because of the expense were only available to the extremely wealthy and the Church.

Once the printed word was made available to the masses, the culture of mankind was able to evolve: ideas were exchanged, discoveries were made, technological conquests were pursued.

The fact that I am writing about the first printing press while typing on my laptop and can print this page with a click of a button is a testament to how far we've come as a species, and this is only in the field of the printed word. Still, the printed word has allowed us vast advances in all other areas of study: science, technology, industry.

I have been thinking about all of this lately because Kyle and I recently purchased a Kindle. We are both avid readers and our house is precariously close to bursting at the seams from the sheer amount of books we own. They are everywhere and our appetite for the printed word has shown no signs of slowing. In fact, as our family grows, so does our library. So, we decided to purchase a Kindle if for no other reason, for our own books, even if we continue to buy books for our children.

The transition has been weird. While I have been really excited about this new little device, and all of its possibilities, I have been feeling rather nostalgic about the printed word lately. I grew up in a world free from cell phones, laptops, wi-fi, DVR, and e-readers. My world consisted of quilts in the backyard, trees with climbing branches, hammocks, creeks, family road trips and many, many books. Books with dog-eared pages and broken spines. Books with yellowing pages that smelled like ink and binding glue.

Recently, I found my old copy of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. I read it in grade school and while flipping through the pages, I discovered that even as a child I had carefully underlined sentences and phrases I found particularly meaningful. On one page I saw a note: "remember this for later, foreshadowing?"

It is impossible to think of my childhood without thinking of discovering secret gardens, trailblazing the American frontier, having adventures with a mouse on a motorcycle, being moved to tears by the relationship between a pig and a spider. Childhood would have been incomplete had I not been able to live in a boxcar, travel to another dimension via "tesseract," find a mysterious lamppost in the woods or witness a red fern growing in between the graves of two very beloved hounds.

For my kids, growing up in a house with cell phones and instant, wireless internet access is the norm. My oldest has never seen a rotary phone. In fact, Jack knows how to operate an iPhone more efficiently than his grandfather. While I know that e-readers like the Kindle are an inevitable part of our societal evolution, I am comforted by the fact that the stories are still there, just in a different, more compact form. Can I imagine my life without books? Yes. But without their stories? Never. And thankfully, I won't ever have to.